


False Shadows

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: Avon is trapped for a very long time in the dark.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	False Shadows

Avon could feel the edges of the scab lifting slightly under his fingernails. With a huge effort of will he pulled his fingers back and left it alone. The last thing he needed was to open up the bleeding scalp wound again. Still, it was healing. 

The metal box was just high enough for him to sit upright against the back wall, from which position he could place his outstretched hands flat against both sides. His feet pushed against the front with his knees partly bent.

It was about two foot in all dimensions smaller than a standard cargo packing crate, which he guessed wasn't accidental. Room for insulation, or for vacuum, since he hadn't heard anything from outside except the muffled click of hatch mechanisms since he woke up. Vacuum would be more difficult and expensive to maintain but he didn't think his captors were doing this on the cheap.

There were two drilled holes through the metal, both small enough in diameter that his hand wouldn't push through. The one in the top dropped food bars and straws of water at intervals onto his legs. The one in the bottom he used, awkwardly and often messily, for what was presumably its intended purpose. Every so often larger straws of warm water came from above and after one unpleasant mouthful from the first he used the antiseptic they contained to clean up his bare skin and the floor. 

He was furiously angry that whoever was doing this to him was concerned enough about his physical state to provide hygiene products and yet utterly indifferent to the likely effect on his sanity. There was no light, no sound and no room to do more than roll from his back to his front. He was naked and not precisely freezing but certainly not a comfortable temperature. Despite the conditions he was not, he judged, losing his mind. He was just uncomfortable, unhappy, apprehensive and very very bored. 

One thing his captors couldn't or didn't find it necessary to block out was the sensation of inertia. Three times now he'd felt the crate move, the last time for an extended period of shifting around. He tried shouting when that happened, just in case there were people outside, but he was fairly sure that the endless silence inside indicated some extremely good soundproofing.

That had been seven food deliveries ago and there had been no detectable movement since. Avon guessed he was now in final transit. To Earth, no doubt. No one else would pay enough for him to fund this sort of operation. 

He'd wondered at first why anyone would go to this trouble instead of just tying him up and shoving him in a fast flyer but the answer was Liberator, of course. Blake might tear around the Galaxy looking for him but to the outside world he must have simply vanished.

His best chance of being traced was from the station where he'd been attacked. Someone there must know something, have seen something, had been paid off by somebody. If Blake were sensible he'd focus all his attention there. If his captors were clever they'd lay trails away to distract Blake. At the moment the smart money was on the people who'd got him but he could at least hope.

Maybe he could sleep for a bit. Avon stretched out his left hand to touch the piles of crumbs heaped up against that wall. Two. Not time to sleep yet, then. He was fairly sure that he wasn't fed at anything like regular intervals but nevertheless it was the only way he had to track time. Three food piles, then sleep, then when he woke he'd eat two of the piles and move the third from left to right, There were seventeen small heaps on his right. However long or short his sleep-wake cycle was, he'd done it seventeen times since he instituted the count.

Avon settled back against the hard metal and took up his mental exercise again. He'd known for years about the technique that used an image of places to store memories, but he'd never put aside the time to build himself a mental residence to use it. Now he was constructing a image of Liberator, corridor by corridor, room by room. She was huge and he would never have claimed to know her layout intimately, but he had found that he could remember far more detail than he would have imagined.

Strange things had started to happen, though. Doors he was sure he'd never seen behind would slide open as his thoughts approached them to show things that couldn't be there. Impossible machines, bizarre animals, people from his past. They were just his imagination running riot. He let them stay where he found them. Nobody said his memory place had to be realistic. 

This time he walked past an open door, glanced in and saw the flight deck, half the ship away from where it should be and with Blake pacing in front of the jet black screen. Blake looked round.

"You've got a nerve, turning up here after all the trouble you've caused."

Avon walked to his console. The screen was utterly black. "You should have found me by now."

"How?" Blake demanded.

"What about the station?"

"What station? 056L? That one?"

"Yes. Just go and look."

"It's gone," Blake said. "Destroyed. And as far as I know you were still on it at the time.

"I wasn't. I'm alive."

"Where?"

"Somewhere dark."

"That's really no help." Blake said disapprovingly. "Think, Avon! You must be able to tell me something useful."

He thought about darkness and silence, which was a mistake because Blake was abruptly gone and he was back in the box again. He tried to convince himself that that was imagination but it had felt real. A hallucination, so perhaps he was going crazy now.

It got him wondering though. If he could communicate with the outside world, what information could he give to increase the chance of being found? It was a pointless question but it was at least a new train of thought to follow, a chance to reconsider everything about his hellishly static environment. 

"Well?" Blake asked.

"The food bars aren't much help." Avon stalked restlessly around the rec room. "A couple of inches long, three quarters of an inch square. They tend to crumble and taste of nuts."

"Colour?" Blake asked

"Idiot!" Avon glared at him.

"Sorry. It's dark. You said that already. What about water?"

"The water's more interesting." There was an empty space where the food dispenser should be. "I haven't come across the packaging before. It feels like a paper straw, about 6 inches long and half the width of my little finger. Tough enough that squeezing won't break it, but as soon as it's punctured the skin disappears completely."

It had taken Avon a frustratingly long time to learn to drink from the straws without most of the contents ending up on his stomach. 

"They also do ones twice the size with disinfectant in." 

"Any idea why they should use these straws?"

"Because there's nothing left over. Hell knows what they expect me to achieve in there but they aren't letting me have any material to work with."

"There must be some record of the stuff," Blake said. "I'll run it past Orac, see if we can hunt down a packaging specialist to question." 

"It probably won't help," Avon said, "Even if you find the manufacturers the chances of hunting down the right customers before I get to wherever I'm going are tiny." 

"We'll be as fast as we can. Promise me you'll hang in there."

"What choice do I have?"

"Good man," Blake said. "Now go away and let me work."

Something hit Avon's legs. Startled, he looked down and the darkness took him again. The food bars were landing in their inevitable place halfway along his thighs. The water would come next. As always he craned his neck upwards to see if he could see anything at all, but the blackness was utterly unbroken. 

His best guess was that he was completely alone in the hold of some anonymous freighter, dependent on an automatic dispenser system for water and food. No possibility of a change of mind by anyone, every chance of being forgotten should something happen to the people who put him here. He needed to warn Blake about that, so the man didn't come out shooting. 

Avon caught himself. He couldn't tell Blake anything. That wasn't Blake. It was a figment, an attempt by his brain to pretend that he had the tiniest control over the situation, the smallest hope. 

Liberator was no doubt still circling round the ruins of 056L. No, he chided himself again. He'd made the destruction of the station up as well. He had no knowledge of anything outside this fucking box since he'd been hit over the head. 

The flight deck was exactly as he remembered it. Avon put in an image of Blake at his console, but man and room all remained lifeless, just a mental picture.

He sighed and ran his hand along the unseen metal floor of his box. He admitted to himself that he'd been looking for Blake, deliberately, knowing it was madness, but all he could do was summon up flat, ordinary memories of the ship. He suspected that insanity would take hold soon enough; he should not go looking for it. 

Avon picked up one of the large straws of disinfectant, running his fingers along the familiar papery surface. He'd kept some back to give himself something to do, though he couldn't think of what use they could be put to other than their intended purpose. 

He could drink them. Enough of the disinfectant would doubtless make him vomit but he doubted that anyone outside, if there was anyone outside, was monitoring his health. No one would open up the crate to treat him. He'd just be sick. Drinking enough to kill himself would probably be impossible and anyway dying wasn't his idea of an acceptable solution.

He could discard them, unused, through the hole in the floor. The lack of permanent odour suggested that his waste was stored or processed or dumped somehow. Probably not the latter if his presence was supposed to be a secret. It was unlikely that the disinfectant would screw up the process or they wouldn't have given it to him, and the straws wouldn't clog up any mechanism since they dissolved on being broken. 

It might be possible to stuff several of them together into the hole in such a way as to block it. Apart from making his situation far worse than it was already he couldn't see where that would get him. It all came back to the monitoring. If no-one was watching he could wreck his environment as much as he was able and achieve nothing except discomfort, sickness and possibly death. 

His back was aching again. Avon shifted his legs into one corner and managed to lie down with his head wedged in the opposite one. In a moment of inspiration, he tucked the three large straws under the back of his neck. It felt remarkably good to have his head supported off the floor. How stupid, he berated himself, to not have thought of it before. 

The small comfort was enough to push him towards sleep, without even the routine of counting his piles of crumbs. 

He dreamed that he was running across a hillside, rock and soil and the occasional scrub. He needed to drink but every pool he approached dried up before he reached it.

"Run faster," the man beside him said. It was the lieutenant from the London. "If you don't run you'll never get there in time."

Around him the rocks were now tables laden with cake but he couldn't eat while he was so thirsty. The jugs on the table were empty. In front of him a huge purple sun was setting. It would be dark soon and there was no water. It was dark; he kept running, tripped and fell backwards.

"Ouch!" Two of the straws had broken and the back of his head had thumped onto the floor. He scrabbled around, still half asleep, for the last drinking water straw to ease his dry mouth. Now he could eat. He drifted off to sleep again in search of the cake. 

He was in Liberator now, looking for the galley. They'd eat everything before he got there if he didn't hurry, but he was lost in a maze of unknown corridors. More and more desperate, he threw himself recklessly around a corner and found himself in a bedroom. 

Blake propped himself up in the bed. "You're in a hurry."

"I'm hungry," Avon said rather plaintively.

Blake looked sympathetic. "I'm sorry. I don't think I can help with that."

Avon sat down on the single armchair. "You could find me."

"We're working on it. There are only three production units that the straws you describe could come from. One inside the Federation, two outside. We're on our way to check out the first independent one now. I was just catching up on some sleep before we arrive in a couple of hours."

Avon remembered what he had to say. "I think everything around me is on automatic. Whatever you do, don't shoot before asking questions or you might not find me until it's too late."

"Understood," Blake said. "How are you holding up?"

"Badly," he said honestly. "Can't you tell?"

"Not really. It's not as if I can see your face."

That was interesting. "I can see you."

"Oh!" Blake twitched the covers a little further up over his naked stomach. "Maybe it's because you're in the dark."

Avon didn't want to think about the darkness, but it was too late. It wrapped around him like a shroud. Blake was gone and he was awake and alone.

Some time after that Avon slid into a long period of waking nightmare. He didn’t know who he was or where he was or what was happening; he was just terrified and desperate for it to stop.

Eventually he came to himself again, in pain and exhausted. His hands, feet, knees, elbows, even his head was bruised and scraped as if he had been throwing himself against the walls.

The floor was wet with urine and the crate stank of shit. There were food bars; he counted them with shaking hands. Six meals’ worth. They were fouled and inedible. He found the least filthy of the water straws and drank from them.

Slowly, almost helpless from fatigue, he started pushing everything on the floor towards the disposal hole. It took what felt like a very long time to get everything clean again. His piles of crumbs were gone forever. He was adrift in time again.

The scrapes and bruises left him with no comfortable position to sit or lie. He noticed eventually that his throat was raw; he must have been screaming for a long time. 

He appreciated now as he could never have done before his previous state of existence, when his cell was clean and dry and he didn’t hurt very much. He was terrified of losing his mind again and waking up bleeding and smeared in excrement. Control; he needed control.

Avon went back to making his mental map of Liberator but this time he wasn’t looking for anyone. He rejected anything that didn’t belong there. He was determined that he would stay sane until he reached Earth, and then he’d deal with whatever was waiting for him there. 

“It’s been over a week,” Blake’s voice came from in front of him. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Avon snapped his head up from where it was resting on his arms but there was nothing, of course. Just darkness.

“Fuck off,” he said tiredly. “You’re not real.”

“I can see you now,” Blake said. “You look much worse than I imagined.”

“I’m not going to listen,” Avon said. With an effort he dragged his mind’s eye back to the corridors of Liberator.

“Three paces,” he muttered. “Door on right. Spare electrical components. Seventeen paces. Door on left. Metal samples. Seven paces. Door on right…”

“…Wardrobe room.” Blake stopped flicking through one of the racks of clothes to face him. “Listen to me, Avon. We’ve found out what ship you’re on.”

Avon stared at him.

“We traced her via the disinfectant straws. Turns out the batch were made to order. We went after the buyers and... well, to cut a long story short, you’re on a freighter called Triton. It’s going to Hebredae.”

“That’s one of the Inner Worlds,” Avon said slowly. “Half of the Inner Fleet is stationed there.” If he was passed over to the Fleet to take to Earth there was little chance of Liberator recovering him by force.

“If you need any confirmation, Servalan is also on her way to Hebredae,” Blake said.

“How long?”

“Servalan docks in 15 hours, the Triton in 20.”

“And Liberator?”

“We can’t intercept the ship before it gets there, but I promise we’ll pull you off the planet,” Blake said. “We’ll get you home.”

Twenty hours. Could it really be nearly over?

No. He was losing his mind again. He closed his eyes and deliberately swung his grazed elbow against where he knew the metal wall was. It exploded in pain and the wardrobe room, and Blake, were gone. 

Avon decided that it was time to think of the future. Not because of anything he'd hallucinated, but he'd been in transit for a long time and he ought to be prepared for whatever happened next.

The next time the disinfectant arrived he scrubbed every inch of his skin with zeal. He couldn't do much about his long, jagged nails but he could rake water through his short beard. He even used a little of his precious drinking water to try to wash his hair.

The scab had disappeared during his delirium, leaving a tender, hairless patch at the back of his head. Now he could feel the prickle of new hairs against his fingertips. He was going to look odd for a long time, thought, them remembered that he was probably going to die. Maybe not straightaway - they'd gone to some trouble to get him alive- but they'd be fools to try and keep him prisoner anywhere where Liberator could get to him. A show trial and immediate execution.

Maybe they'd let him have a bath before they put him in front of the cameras. Right now he could think of nothing better. A bath in sunlight with a glass of wine and a piece of chocolate cake and he might even die happy.

His anticipation lasted through three food cycles, during which nothing happened. When the second set of disinfectant arrived he felt a huge sense of let down. Unreasonable. There was no reason to think anything would happen straightaway. Twenty hours, he thought, and sneered at his own gullibility. His own insanity could fool him. It must be long past 20 hours now. He could feel the panic surging back. He couldn't stand this for a moment longer. 

The crate shifted.

For a moment he thought that he'd imagined it, and then it shifted again. There was nothing detectable for several minutes, and then a jerk that threw him sideways. He hadn't imagined that. 

There was a long period of alternate shifts and stillness, during which food bars and water arrived from the ceiling as if nothing was happening, Avon drank some of the water without conscious thought. His attention was all on the movements, 

Eventually the motion stopped. Avon calmed down enough to eat a little but his stomach was churning. When would they come for him? Was he on Earth or somewhere else? 

(Hebredae, his treacherous brain insisted, He would not think of Hebredae.) 

Noise. There was noise, unbearable after the long silence - his hands were clamped over his ears. Then light, so bright that it seared through his closed eyelids even when his head was buried between his knees. He was under attack and he was defenceless

He forced himself to think through the panic. Roof- they were taking the roof off to get him out. That was the light and the noise - just an cutting torch. It would stop soon. It had to.

It stopped. There was a loud grating noise as the metal roof was lifted off. Avon cautiously blinked at the lights high above him. His eyes were watering too badly to then to be anything but a blur. 

"Fuck me,"

The voice was too loud and distorted. It took Avon a while to figure out what the man was saying.

"He's alive, I think. It stinks in here like you wouldn't believe. We should be getting hazard pay."

"Just get him out," another voice came. "Carefully, mind. He isn't to be hurt."

"Get me a sheet or something," the first voice came again from above him. "I'm not touching him." 

Something blocked the blurred light. Moving- someone coming down into his space. Cloth was wrapped around him.

"Can you stand?"

He tried and failed, his knees giving way in agony as soon as he tried to rise. As he sprawled on the floor the man wrapped arms around his stomach and hauled him up. Other hands reached down help to pull him out. He lay on a different surface now, amazed at the novelty of that. 

"I think he's dying," the first voice said. "What do we do now?"

A face appeared in Avon's line of vision, peering at him. "No, he's conscious. There's a dorm just the other side of those doors. Take him there and seal the place off, guns at all exits,"

"Should we clean him up?"

"She won't want to smell that, will she? Yes. Be careful with him though."

The soldiers were not unkind as soldiers went. One stripped down to the waist in order to hold him up under the hot water of the shower. Another went hunting through the dorm for some clothes that might fit him. When she returned she thrust the workers overalls at him, said, too quietly for the others to hear, "Painkillers" and patted her hip once. 

After they had finally managed to get Avon dressed, he pushed his hands into the pockets and could feel two small tablets. He palmed then and took the opportunity to swallow then as soon as no one was looking in his direction. The reduction in pain was a bliss he hadn't been expecting. It let him think about where he was and what was happening. 

He was under a dome. That could mean Earth or a thousand other planets. Hebredae had domes, his brain insisted. He ignored it. 'She' could mean anyone. He was in the hands of the Federation military- that was all he could be sure about. 

It wasn't clear whether they knew who he was. He had a beard and longer hair, he’d lost a fair bit of weight, and he hadn't tried to speak to any of them. Though they'd clearly been expecting to find someone in the crate and had orders on how to treat him, no one had referred to him by name or mentioned Liberator’s people.

They put him in a hover chair, tied his hands in front of him and put a visor over his head. He couldn't see around him but at least it wasn't completely dark. The restraints were minimal, but he knew that he wasn't physically up to an escape attempt. He would wait to see where he was taken.

Somewhere quiet. The chair stopped, 

"Take that off." The clear voice was utterly familiar. The visor was lifted and there she was, studying him. 

"This isn't..." She started and then, "Oh. Clear the room,"

"Do I look that different?” His voice was hoarse.

"You look terrible," she said. "I take it that you did not have a pleasant journey."

"Was that your idea?"

"The orders I gave were to deliver you to me safely and secretly. The exact precautions were arranged by others."

Even if she hadn't ordered it, she had known, had authorised his descent into hell. 

"How long?"

"Twenty-two Earth days." She didn't hesitate over the figure. He was willing to bet that she'd counted them as they passed. 

Three weeks. He had thought longer, much longer. Months. He lifted his chained hands to his short beard. She might be telling the truth, in which case he'd gone to pieces much faster than he thought. He wondered if she knew about that. 

"Where am I?"

"Not on Earth," she said. "Too obvious. We are somewhere quiet and very well defended. The first the Galaxy will know of your whereabouts will be when they see the footage of your trial."

"So I get a trial?" The words came out along with a fit of coughing

Servalan rose and poured two glasses of wine from a decanter on the side table. When she offered one to him he tried not to show how desperate he was for it.

It was as good as he'd imagined. Better, because it was real. 

"Of course you'll have a trial. The Federation is built on the founding principle of justice for all."

"You’re talking to me now for a reason, I presume."

She smiled at him and refilled his glass. "It may surprise you to know that despite your obvious belief that you are irreplaceable, the Revolution will not be halted by your execution. Blake will be heartbroken of course."

He assumed she was being sarcastic. Their arguments were legendary. 

"But being Blake, he will channel his grief into his work, and cause us even more trouble."

"Good," Avon said. "At least my death will achieve something."

She raised a perfect eyebrow at him. "Come, Avon. We both know you're not the martyr type. If I offered you a chance to survive you'd bite my hand off for it."

He smiled at her. At least he thought it was a smile. He was out of practice. "So now we have it. How do you expect me to betray him?"

"Comprehensively," she said. "All I need from you now is your agreement. Then my doctors will treat your injuries and after that there's a meal and a bed waiting for you."

Half the Federation treasury wouldn't have bought him as readily as the prospect of a bed with a mattress. "Yes," he said. He could decide whether he meant it or not later. 

The medical examination was thorough. As well as the wounds left from his frenzy, some of which had become infected, he was apparently suffering from a kidney infection, dietary deficiencies, dehydration and hair loss. Avon submitted to a mass of injections and pills. Liberator's med unit would have put things right immediately.

He flatly refused to undertake a psychological examination. Servalan wasn't getting inside his head, and no one need know about his hallucinations or the time he'd lost to madness. 

By the time they took him to his room he was struggling to keep his eyes open. The room was small, barely furnished and with the lock on the outside; a cell, undoubtedly, but it had everything he needed. The food left out was simple, bread, a vat grown apple, and a jug of some mild ale. He'd never eaten so well in his life. He finished the last crumbs and rolled onto the bed. "Lights remain on" he told the room control unit, and fell straight asleep. 

A nightmare of being swallowed inch by inch by a huge snake woke him, his heart racing furiously. For a moment he thought he was still dying. The room was still brightly lit and he had no idea how much time had passed. 

Someone had been in while he slept. There was a pile of plain black clothes on the floor, and a covered tray that turned out to be breakfast. He found that he could stand and walk to the small sanitary unit without much pain. 

Avon fortified himself as well as he could with the breakfast. He had no doubt that the day was going to be difficult. He'd need all his wits about him to survive. 

The door slid open and he stood up to face the soldiers, hiding the shock on his face; he hadn’t looked at them properly before. Under the Fed arrow their insignia had the small pattern of four ringed planets; the Inner Fleet emblem. 

It meant nothing, he told himself. Four of them were walking with him along the corridors, too slowly to be called a march. Apart from Earth the Inner Stars were the most tightly under central control and the proximity of their own Fleet made outside attack virtually impossible. It was the obvious place to bring him, and he had known that subconsciously. Hebredae hadn't just been a stab in the dark. 

“I don’t like the beard,” Servalan said.

“Lend me a sharp razor and I’ll solve the problem.”

“That’s better. I was worried about you yesterday. You were not your usual self at all. Travel fatigue, I suppose.”

With a surge of hatred Avon imagined Blake walking through the door and shooting her in the head. She returned his slight smile. “See? You and I can work together if we’re suitably careful.”

“Can we, indeed?”

“You would be wise to try, Kerr Avon. The dark is still waiting for your return.”

If she’d threatened him with pain or with death he could have laughed at her and made that a starter for opening negotiations. He wasn’t a hero but neither was he a coward, not usually. But if she put him back in that black, silent box then he was certain to go mad again and not in weeks but in hours. Death he could face if he had to but not the loss of his sanity, not the hallucinations and the delirium. 

Her smile was sharper now. She'd seen the reaction he'd desperately tried to hide. "We have a lot to get through. Shall we begin?" 

It was not a complicated scheme. There was a senior member of Federation security who was known to be a Rebel agent. Apparent serendipity would bring her into Avon's interrogation, where she would discover that he was shortly to be secretly transferred to Earth on a pursuit ship with a small escort. To convince Blake of her bona fides Avon would give her some message for Blake that could only have come from him. Liberator would launch a rescue attempt when the ship was en route, and be ambushed, 

Avon, of course, would stay exactly where he was, with half the Inner Fleet between him and freedom, but if he did precisely what he was told the justice system might be inclined to be merciful, especially if they considered that his particular skills might make him a productive member of society. Avon took that to be an indirect job offer from Fed security. He'd had worse offers.

He thought it was a shoddy plan. Whoever this Rebel agent was working for probably had no way of contacting Blake. What there was of a rebellion was nothing like that organised. Liberator might not be close enough to make the intercept. And for his part, he could as easily send a message warning Blake away as luring him in and the Feds wouldn’t know the difference. 

When Servalan detected his scepticism she showed him the cell they had prepared for him, via video link so that he couldn't have any idea of where in the complex it was. It was bare apart from the chains attached to the floor and had no light source. 

"It should be less than three days between your message and Liberator's capture. You won't need food or drink for that long. We'll just close the door and you can wait in there for the good news. Then you can come out." 

"And if the message doesn't get to Blake?" He could do nothing about the shake in his voice. 

"Sometimes we have to take gambles. The prize is worth the cost."

She was going to do this to him whether he co-operated or not. He'd just be let out earlier if he successfully betrayed then all. 

"If that's your idea then you'll get nothing from me."

"Come on, Avon," she said. "You're a brave boy. You can manage a little while in the dark."

No, he thought. I can't. "Your plan is unacceptable as it stands. Offer me an alternative," he said grimly. 

For a moment he thought she'd call his bluff, but he wasn't bluffing. Three days, three months were all the same to him. He wouldn't come out of there sane.

"Very well," she said. "You can stay in your current accommodation for now. But if that pursuit ship reaches the Solar System unscathed, you'll be in the dark for a very long time. I suggest you think carefully about the message you send to Blake."

He thought about it, back in his lit cell, lying on a rough but clean blanket. It was the first chance he'd had to properly consider what he was going to do.

Betraying the Liberator didn't much appeal. He'd much rather Blake had the alien ship than Servalan, not least because Blake might figure out a way to spring him from captivity. The prospect of spending the rest of his life working for the Federation from prison, which was realistically the best he might be offered, was essentially crap. 

On the other hand, if he wanted to stay alive and sane right now what choice did he have?

He was interrupted by a soldier bringing dinner. She was the one who'd given him the painkillers. He sat up. 

"Thank you," he said. It would be taken by any watcher to be for the food. "Another apple! Military rations are better than they used to be. Do the Fleet really import them all the way from Earth?"

"Vat grown on planet," she said dismissively. "You'll get sick of the taste of them soon."

"I doubt it. After the last month I'll eat everything that Hebredae can produce with relish." 

"It's mostly just apples," she said, a little amused. She caught herself - he could see her recalling that she wasn't meant to talk to him - and walked out.

Avon ate his dinner because decent food was still a marvellous luxury, but his brain was whirling. There were eight Inner Worlds, despite their logo. That gave him a 12.5% chance of being on Hebredae rather than any of the others. It wasn't that small, as chances went. Certainly not small enough to make the reality of his hallucinations a more plausible explanation. 

Besides, if Blake knew where Avon was, where was he? No, Avon was entirely on his own for this one. If he wanted to live, and to stay out of the darkness, he ought to be planning the message for Blake. The real Blake. The potentially gullible one, 

The next day was his interrogation. Though Servalan had assured him that it was just a show for the benefit of their spy, Avon got the distinct impression that she hadn't bothered telling her interrogators that. They were certainly not going easy on him. 

Avon found it hard to believe that any of the hard faced, brutal women were secretly on his side. As the long day wore on he began to think that the story of the rebel agent had been nothing more than one of Servalan's mind games. He had no difficulty in acting surprised when one of the women got him alone and revealed her allegiance.

"They're moving you in two days. I can get word to Liberator, but I doubt if they will believe me."

Now another ridiculous aspect of this ill-considered plan became clear to Avon. He was expected to provide a password that could lure Liberator into any sort of trap to a Fed interrogator just because she said she was on the side of the rebels. 

He would, of course, because he had no choice, but if this agent was genuine and had any intelligence she should wonder about his rapid acquiescence. 

"Remind him that I didn't surprise him." He got her to repeat the words twice. There. That was done now, for better or worse.

He was in the hands of Intelligence now. There was no hover chair; they dragged him back to his cell by his arms and threw him inside.

He lay on the floor for a few minutes then crawled painfully over to his bed and lay on that. Would they do the same to him tomorrow? He couldn’t think of any reason why not. They didn’t need his co-operation any longer and there was plenty that he knew that they would want.

He was glumly considering Servalan’s untrustworthiness when the lights went out.

Panic. Mustn’t panic. He took one deep breath after another, trying to calm his racing heart. It was just dark, that was all. There was food and drink on the table. He had room to walk around, and he could hear noises from the other side of the door.

What he could hear sounded like far off shouting and the noise of running footsteps. He stood up, holding himself upright on the edge of the table. The voices were gone now; maybe he’d imagined them. His pulse was so loud in his ears that he couldn’t be certain of any sounds.

He groped around on the table for the bread, tore a small piece off and ate it slowly, focussing on the taste. They had turned the lights off to frighten him, that was all. To remind him of the stakes. He remembered the stakes without their prompting. He would not be frightened of this weak shadow of what he’d gone through.

“Avon?” 

Blake’s voice was so near that he must have teleported into the room. Avon reached out towards the voice. “Blake. You’re there.” He felt nothing. Had the man stepped backwards?

“Not quite,” Blake said. “But we’re getting there. We should be with you very soon.”

“How are you broadcasting this?” Avon demanded. “You must have a transmitter.”

“Just hang on. I promise we won’t be much longer.”

“Tell me how you’re doing this!” Avon demanded but there was no response and he could feel that the room was now empty.

“Turn the lights on!” He’d been hammering on the door long enough that his fists were battered and sore. “Turn the fucking lights on! Open this door!”

They wouldn’t, of course. He gave up and went frantically searching through the darkness for something he could use.

The tray they had brough the food on was flimsy plastic. He propped it up against the table legs with unsteady hands and then kicked with his full force. There was a crack.

Avon fell to his knees and groped around for the fragments. There were a couple that might be sharp enough to get through the skin. He hoped so, anyway. The alternative was swallowing them and internal bleeding was a singularly unpleasant death.

With the first sharp cut came a numb calm that he hadn’t been expecting. He poked at his wrist. No blood yet. He needed blood.  
He kept going until the pain in his wrist overrode every other misery and his panic was gone. He could feel the fragment sticky with his blood now. His initial purpose had been to get a reaction; to get someone, anyone, to open the door, but he barely noticed that that hadn’t happened. 

Eventually he dropped the slick plastic by accident and couldn’t find it again. He wanted to get onto the bed but he was too weak so he slumped on the floor instead and waited for it all to be over.

“Avon! Avon! Speak to me, please!”

“You’re not Blake,” he thought.

“He needs the med bay. Hurry!”

Avon couldn’t hurry dying any faster. Couldn’t they leave him along for a few more minutes?

He was hallucinating the bright teleport room now, and unreal Blake staring down at him. Avon glared at him. “Leave me alone” he muttered. Then the hallucination turned back into the blackness of his cell.

He was in a facsimile of his own room, lying in bed as if he’d just woke up. There was nobody else there.

His injuries were gone, even the deep cuts on his wrist, and when he patted his face he found that he was clean shaven.

“Go away,” he said to the imaginary room but it didn’t. He closed his eyes but the light still showed through his eyelids. He felt sick to his stomach. He couldn’t do this any more. Any reality, however terrible, was better than these constant fantastical glimpses. 

He climbed out of bed and curled up against the back wall. “No lights, no sound, no messages,” he told an imagined Zen.

Now there was nothing except the beat of his heart. They’d come to torture and kill him at some point but at least the darkness in which he waited for the end to come was real.

“Light off.”

The soft voice came from somewhere to his left. He curled up tighter against the noise of the voice and the door closing but there was just silence for a long time.

It didn’t convince him. He could feel the presence of Blake sitting next to him, the man’s quiet breathing. It was nothing like being alone in the darkness. He wished the man away, harder and harder, but it didn’t work.

“I wish I knew what they did to you,” Blake’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “If the med unit can’t fix it I don’t know where to start.”

Go away. Let me keep my sanity. Don’t you know what you’re doing to me?

“What am I doing, Avon?”

“It was Hebredae.”

“Why does the planet matter?” Blake sounded puzzled.

“I knew it was Hebredae.” Avon uncurled enough to glare at the space in the dark. “That’s what you did.”

Blake sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. You’re not on Hebredae any more, Avon. You’re home.”

Avon laughed. “No. Home isn’t darkness.”

“It doesn’t have to be dark in here. Zen, very low light.”

Black turned to grey. He could make out faint patches of light, patches of darkness. 

“Can you see me now?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Was there any point in reasoning with his own hallucination? “Why do you keep coming back?”

“Back?” He could see Blake’s shape in the gloom. “I haven’t been in here before.”

“You told me about Hebredae.”

“I didn’t tell you anything about Hebredae. How could I?”

Avon sat up, indignant. “Of course you couldn’t. So why did you?”

“You’re not making sense,” Blake said. 

“No, I’m not!” Avon wanted to throttle him. “That’s your fault. You kept appearing in the darkness and telling me things I couldn’t know, promising me things. How the fuck was I meant to stay sane?”

There was silence for a while. Then Blake spoke again, softer. “You were imprisoned in darkness, and you think you saw me?”

“I didn’t see you. I hallucinated you.”

“If you know it was a hallucination, then you know it wasn’t really me.”

Avon laughed hollowly at that. “Really you?”

“Shit.” Blake said abruptly. “You think you’re hallucinating now. No, Avon, listen to me. We rescued you. You’ve been in the med unit and now you’re in your own room. This is reality.”

“The real Blake couldn’t have rescued me,” Avon said impatiently. “You couldn’t have known where I was.” 

"After weeks of flying around getting nowhere that turned out to be the simplest part. We just followed Servalan."

"What about the straws?"

"What straws?" Blake asked.

Avon reached out and grasped Blake's arm. It felt solid. "You didn't talk to me."

"No." 

"So how did I know I was on Hebredae?"

"I have no idea."

"What do I believe now?" he asked, mostly to himself.

"Believe me. You're sane. I'm guessing that the med unit can cure insanity but it can probably do nothing about the fact that you think you might still be crazy. You'll just have to get over that one." Blake said. "Why don't you come and have a look at the internal consistency of this reality? I think you'll be impressed," 

Avon managed to smile a little at that. He stood up with nothing worse than a slight stiffness from lying on the floor. "A bath," he said. "And then a bottle of Marron Red. And an apple, from a tree, not vat grown. And chocolate cake. If you can manage to provide all that without disappearing abruptly then I might start to think this is real."

"I'll get Vila onto the food and drink straightaway." Blake said, "He knows where all the luxuries are stored. Zen, run a hot bath in Avon's quarters. Shall I meet you in the galley in half an hour?"

Avon sank back into the hot water and closed his eyes in bliss.

Blake's voice came from beside him, "I promised you that we'd get you home again."

Avon didn't bother opening his eyes. "I suppose I ought to say thank you, then," he said aloud and he slid under the water. When he surfaced the feel of the silence told him that he was entirely alone again. He smiled, slightly, and reached for the towel.


End file.
